Out of the Darkness

I have been trying to get ADSL or an affordable alternative for 3 or 4 years! Telstra have steadfastly refused to provision me for ADSL offering different explanations along the way, the latest being a miniscule failure of the voice SQ test (6.59db instead of 6.5) Tried npgdsl & lladsl requests, letters to Helen Coonan, local members, 2 way sat subsidies etc etc along the way. Even considered a hunger strike at one stage :)

Well I have just recently ordered and received Virgin BB@H and it is like coming out of the darkness.

No begging, no knockbacks, no hassles. Placed an online order, got the modem 2 days later, plugged it in, and it just worked straight up. Only 2 signal bars but I get HSDPA all the time (whenever something is coming down, UTMS when idle) The speedtest reports 700kb.

The phone works as advertised so far. I'll port my number at the end of the month.

Everything has just been so freaking easy...

It is hard to explain how much of a relief it is to finally have something other than dialup (that is actually reasonably priced). Unless you've been through the knockbacks and false hope and the grind of fighting telstra every step of the way (just getting them to accept an npgdsl request is a marathon of frustration) you just can't appreciate how it gets you down.

And the best part, after I ditch my landline Telstra will be getting nada from me...ever again.

Mystic River

Having just read the book I thought I would get the movie out and watch it.

What a waste of two hours of my life! I know that books by their nature have much more latittude for character development than films but this was dreadful.

No attempt at all to show us the nature of the three central characters when they were children which in the book built the platform for the entire story.

Just pure shite and not what I was expecting from such a highly acclaimed movie.

It is possible to adapt a book well to film - look no further than the Green Mile.

Two thumbs down!

Anzac Day is all about Respect

Says it all really.

The ADSL fight continues

I ordered a new phone line today with the stipulation that it must be ADSL capable. Apparently by stipulating the code NPGDSL (no pair gain digital subscriber line) it forces them to try and find an alternate cabling route that will meet their transmission loss standards.

The best chances for success occur when a) you have been rejected for excessive transmission loss CHECK and b) you have neighbours who have successfully received ADSL already CHECK.

I can expect an answer from the cable assigner within about 4 days apparently.

Fingers crossed because my next stop is to contact the papers and go on a 'hunger strike for broadband'.

A Night with the Mummies

Carole has a mother's group she goes to and occasionally they go to a movie. She mentioned that they had picked A Night at the Museum to see and that she had no interest in it at all. So I mentioned that I would love to see it since I like Ben Stiller movies a lot...

Long story short I ended up at the cinema last night with the Mummies. No other husbands, just me and the Mummies. Carole was peeved that I even went for drinks afterwards, where I learned lots of stuff...Like Patrick likes to stand up & pee in the bath and when told you shouldn't pee in the bath he reaches down and swirls it around to mix it in better & Rachael drove her car into the garage with a $10k bike on the roof and wrecked the bike, the garage & the car.

The movie was very good btw. Laughs were a little spare in the 1st half but I laughed quite a bit in the 2nd half. 7/10.

Frustratapod

I recently bought an 80gb Ipod video and an Ipod HiFi speaker dock. After dumping all 60gb of my music onto it everything was going swimmingly.

Then I docked it back into my pc and I-Tunes 7 tells me my ipod is in recovery mode and needs to be restored. Huh? So I do the restore (which takes it back to bare metal btw), I-Tunes tells me to leave it connected and it will be re-detected. But it tells me again that the ipod is in recovery mode and needs to be restored.

Off to google where I quickly found this apple support article and the penny dropped...I had plugged a camera in before docking the ipod. The ipod was trying to get the same logical drive letter as the camera but obviously couldn't. Quick bit of rearranging in disk management and voila, I-Tunes is happy with the ipod when it is docked again.

What a meaningful message to describe not being able to get a drive letter -> "iTunes has detected an iPod in recovery mode - Use iTunes to restore"

4 hours later and I have my music back on the ipod.

Fast forward a week. Wake up this morning and groggily walk over to the ipod docked in the hi-fi to play some wake up music. No playlists. Hmmm. No artists. Shit. No songs. Fuckin Hell. Nothing. Still have my movies, tv shows etc but not one skerrick of music.

Open I-Tunes and all my music is there. So how can my music be on I-Tunes but not on the ipod. It's not actually possible to delete music from the ipod without using I-Tunes (or some other software on the pc) which is mega st00pid anyway. So what happened?

More googling, this time no explanation presents itself quickly. More head scratching. Finally I try to play one of the songs in I-Tunes. It can't be found, would I like to locate it? Hmmm. Check the songs can be played directly from the USB external drive I keep them on. No probs. Must be a drive assignment issue. Can't find the drive letter assigned when they were loaded into I-Tunes...I-Tunes just says it can't be found. Finally found the drive assignment in an xml file in the i-tunes tree under my documents. Yep the drive now has a different assignment. Change it back to the one that i-tunes loaded from a week ago and back in business.

So what actually happened? Last night I docked the ipod and it set off to auto sync. In the meantime I watched an episode of Las Vegas. So I-tunes must have gone to sync and not been able to get at any songs so decides to delete everything off of the ipod...jebus

4 more hours later and I again have my music back on the ipod.

But for how long?

Wed 28th

9am 2 x bananas
12pm 2 x salad rolls, 1 jam roll
7pm 1 x strip sub - no chips or other crap


Thu 29th

10am 2 slices toasted bread with ham cheese & tomato
1pm 2 x salad rolls
7pm rib fillet steak, boiled potatos, carrots, peas & cauliflower

Fri 30th

9am 5 x weetbix, milk, sugar
1pm 2 x salad rolls
7pm curry mince & rice


Sat 1st May

10am 4 slices of lightly buttered toast & jam
3.45 pm a salad roll
6pm 2 x sausage & onions on bread, 2 stubbies of lite
8pm 3 x stubbies of lite

Exercise for the past 5 days has been very light as I have been crook. As you can see my food intake has not dropped to compensate for the lack of exercise. But I have stuck to normal meal times with no snacking and other crap. Also strawberry jam is creeping into my diet more frequently :(

Tue 27th

7AM OJ
11.30AM 4 x kiwi fruit
12.30 2 x salad sandwiches, 2 slices strawberry jam & bread
7.00PM coconut crumbed prawns, chips, salad, 2 schooners & 1 pot of lite

Exercise 5.4km walk in 41.25 min (average over 7km/h)

2nd weekly weigh in as follows :-

1st Me (102.1) -> (98.4) -> (97.2)
2nd Chris (113.5) -> (107.2) -> (107.4)
3rd John (80.2) -> (76.6) -> (77.0)
4th Seb (109.5) -> (107.4) -> (108.0)
5th Alun (107.0) -> (103.6) -> (104.2)

So despite having a nowhere near as healthy weekend I still lost weight. But maybe that sends a bad message...

Fri 23rd

7AM OJ
1.00PM Roast Beef, 4 Schooners Gold
4.30PM 2 Stubbies Gold
6.30PM Vietnamese chicken salad


Exercise – Walk the dog


Sat 24th

9AM 2 x bananas
11AM 3 x sausages, 2 x bread rolls, onions, 2 schooners gold
7PM steak burger & salad, sausage burger, nibblies – chips, kabana & cheese, huge slice of chocolate mud cake with 2 profiteroles, 4 stubbies gold, 1 bourbon & coke

Exercise – 18 holes of golf

Sun 25

9AM OJ
12:30PM Stubbie of gold
2:00PM Seafood Marinara & OJ
7.00PM 3 slices white bread and strawberry jam

Exercise – walk the dog

Mon 26th

10AM 2 x bananas
2PM 2 x sausages & salad, 2 bread rolls, iced lemon cake and ice cream, 3 stubbies of lite

Exercise – 18 holes of golf, dog obedience

Thur 22nd April

7.00AM OJ
9.30AM apple
1.30PM 2 x schooners of gold after touch footy
2.00PM 2 x Salad Sandwiches
7.30PM Ham cheese & tomato omelette (3 eggs), 3 small rolls & smear of butter

Exercise touch footy, walk dog

Wed 21st April

7.00AM OJ
12.00PM 2 x Salad Sandwiches
2.00PM Grapes
3.30PM 2 slices of bread with jam (no butter), apple
6.30PM Reheat balsamic vinegar pasta and lamb sirloin with vegies

Exercise - soccer (incl jog to field), walk the dog

Tue 20th April

7.00AM Orange Juice

11.30AM 2 x salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, red onion, beetroot, lettuce.

5.30PM steak sandwich, small serve of chips, diet coke, 3 schooners gold

Mon 19th April

7.00AM Orange Juice

12.00PM 2 x salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, red onion, beetroot, lettuce.

6.00PM 3 large sushi rolls & ginger , caramel skim milk shake

We had our first weekly weigh in.

1st Chris 113.5 -> 107.2 (-5.55%)
2nd John 80.2 -> 76.6 (-4.49%)
3rd Me 102.1 -> 98.4 (-3.62%)
4th Alun 107.0 -> 103.6 (-3.18%)
5th Seb 109.5 -> 107.4 (-1.92%)

Fri 16th April

7.00AM Orange Juice

1.00PM Roast pork & veg. 3 schooners gold

4.30PM 2 x stubbies gold

6.30PM chilli chicken & rice



Sat 17th April

10AM Ham & salad roll during golf

1.00PM 2 x salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, pineapple, red onion, beetroot, lettuce.

7.00PM Balsamic vinegar pasta and lamb sirloin with vegies


Sun 18th April


10AM 2 x slices toast with light smear of butter and strawberry jam , 2 x slices toast with low fat cheese & tomato, banana

2PM 2 salad sandwiches on white bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, pineapple, low fat cheese, lettuce.

7PM Baked rainbow trout fillets with extra virgin olive oil, chilli, oregano, ginger, parsley, rock salt and ground black pepper , large glass of white wine

Breakfast
2 slices lightly buttered toast with strawberry jam. Orange Juice.

Lunch
2 egg and lite salad cream sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter. Apple, orange, tim tam.

Afternoon Tea
Apple + tim tam
1 stubbie gold

Tea

Cold salad – leg ham & silverside, beetroot, swiss cheese, corn kernels, peas, 2 slices of lightly buttered soy & linseed bread, + left over pre mixed Mediterranean salad

I'm involved in a bet to see who in our work group can lose the most weight. To help me stay focused I'm going to post my daily food intake here

Yesterday :-

Breakfast
Orange Juice

Lunch
2 salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, beetroot, lettuce. Apple, orange

Afternoon Tea
Tim Tam

Tea
3 soft boiled eggs, 4 slices lightly buttered toast

Late Snack
Apple

Stuff that's been happening in my life :-

- my father in law (who lives in my rental house) had his 105cm 40" widescreen TV and home theatre speakers knocked off in a break and enter. Calling the Karma gods..are you listening?

- made about $3k on some shares (ASX:TIMPA) thanks to an imminent merger of the parent company. Also had some success in the Promina IPO (ASX:PMN) that listed at $1.70 now trading at $2.36

- going on holidays next month for a week at the gold coast. Main holiday this year will be a trip through Victoria to South Australia via the Great Ocean Rd . Also taking in the Australia Open Golf at Moonah Links on the Morningtn Peninsula.

- been doing quite a few geocaches - up to 16 or 17 found so far. Bravo Hotel, Photo Finish, Feel Like a Tooheys , Poogie Yes Yes , Mountain Creekside , Caloundra City , Brumby View , Wild View , Plantman #19 , Expoition to the North Pole , MacGavin , Clark Kent , Third Lagoon , Where Eagles Dare , Money Changer , Homer , Inner Brisbane , Microjelly. We will be placing our own caches in the near future as well.

- Had my best round of golf for a while (84) and followed it up with some similar scores 90, 87,90. Spending way too much money on golf balls. What started at $30/dozen limit has been as high as $50/dozen lately but I need to reign it in. Current ball is the Top Flite Tour $42/doz, but I have been playing the Precept MC Lady ($30/doz) and Nike Tour Accuracy ($49/doz) as well.

Probably loads of other stuff to update with but that'll do.

Token blog update to keep Tank happy.

Had an overnight trip to Korralbyn to play golf on Anzac day. 6 of us played in the Copperhead challenge from the back tees and it was pretty tough. Some info about the course and how tough it is can be found here. The weekly copperhead challenge from the back tees that we played in gives away a dozen balls just for breaking net par 72 but since 1984 when the comp started they have had just 2% of players collect the free balls!! None of us collected either.

I enjoyed the golf but it was bedlam when we got back to the resort and started drinking. These days I like to control the rate I drink and keep control of my senses. Bad stuff happens when I don't :)The downside of this is that when everyone else is getting plastered and going mental it can be a little testing on your patience. Maybe I'm getting old! One of the guys managed to break the glass top of a coffee table which cost us $50 but it's amazing that was the extent of the damage. The unit looked like a bomb site when I got up next morning!!

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I got Robbie Slater's auto-biography for my birthday and have really enjoyed it. The guy is a bit of a big head plonker and I was expecting not to like the book that much, but he has a really easy to read style that has a lot of interesting behind the scenes info about his time at West Ham and the other clubs he played at.

I'm starting to amass a bit of a sports biography collection. One day I'll collate a list.

Long time no post.

Recent DVD's added to my collection :- 4 disc Spiderman box set, King Ralph, Band of Brothers box set - which I picked up for $36.95 AUD since it was mis priced. What a gritty emotion packed series.

I hit a guy with a golf ball the other day - from 250 metres away it hit him on the ankle on the full..it had to hurt. He was amazingly understanding about it..I would have been way pissed off since he was standing in the middle of his own fairway when it happened. Carded a 90 with 36 stableford points.

Won tickets to see Bruce Springsteen's Brisbane concert last month. Carole is the big fan and wanted the tickets bad, but I had a great time. The Boss just didn't stop for 3 solid hours. He puts so much energy into his concerts it is easy to see why he is still one of the biggest selling live acts around.

Discovered geocaching the other day. Basically people hide stuff and post the gps co-ordinates on the net, you load them into your gps receiver and go find them. Generally each cache has several things in it (with only a small $ value), and you take one thing out and replace it with something you took with you and fill in the log book. Lots of fun. Carole in particular has got right into it.

After buying a $350 shaver with credit card reward points, I can honestly say that no electric shaver is as good as a blade. Here's the one I bought

Played 9 holes in a break in the rain yesterday and although I didn't score well, I am striking the ball as well as ever. That's a bit of a contradiction but I am not far off posting a very low score (by my standards). We were honouring the annual tradition of having a Kenny Young memorial golf day. Kenny was the father of one of my friends and passed away in '96. Each year for the past 7 years about a half a dozen of us get together to remember him.

I'm sure he's up there in a bar somewhere having a beer and a laugh. Cheer's Kenny!!

Picked up the Reservior Dogs SE today. About time it got released in Region 4. Why the bloody hell have JB Hifi started taking the discs out of the cases? I want my discs in the shrink wrap in pristine condition dammit. Scratch another DVD retailer. [pun intended]

Also found some blanks that my tempermental cdr will burn to. Verbatim digital vinyls. Look like a mini LP record.

If the Around the World in 80 Days reference got you reminiscing, you can download Jules Verne's novels here. It's not illegal..old books become freeware after a certain time.

Can anyone explain to me why an xbox can be had in this country for under $300AUD which includes damn good graphics AS WELL AS a hard drive, processor and everything else and yet a decent quality video card for the pc costs as much or in many cases much more????

I'm guessing that the xbox hardware is heavily subsidised because they know you will be buying games @ $100 a pop. Still doesn't make it right...doesn't microsoft put nvidia graphics hardware in the xbox? How can nvidia sell to ms at a fraction of the cost they want consumers to pay for their pc cards? I know it's not apples with apples but it's still fruit. Rotten fruit if you ask me. Fix Tricks, Fix Tricks.

I fixed my pedal with an occy strap. Does the job for now. Did I mention that I can't get enough of GTR 2002?

I bought a copy of F1 2002 on Sunday. You'd think I'd do that because I wanted to play it right? Wrong. I had to have it so that I could play a free mod called GTR 2002 that is based on its physics engine. The mod is based on the real life FIA GT championship from Europe which features Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborgini, Dodge Vipers etc. For a free mod developed out of the goodness of the hearts of 20 or so dedicated enthusiasts, it is absolutely fantastic. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun it is. I have been having a ball with it every night until last night. The spring on one of my pedals snapped and that was the end of that until I can get it fixed. Damn doesn't begin to describe how annoying that is.

it's a short working week but it sure seems to be taking a long time.

I've just spent some time evaluating my DVD collection. Your movies must say something about you. One time I thought about starting a thread on aus.dvd about doing an analysis of people based on the contents of their collections...here's a quick list of mine - you make your own conclusions :-

Alien
Antz
Bone Collector, The
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Braveheart
Brewster's Millions
Contact
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Das Boot
Desperado / El Mariachi
Exorcist, The: 25th Anniversary
Fifth Element, The
Fight Club
Gladiator
Good Will Hunting
Great Escape, The
Heat
Jackie Brown
Jebediaries
Jumanji
Lawrence of Arabia
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Matrix, The
Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The
Moby - Play The DVD
Notting Hill
Paris Concert for Amnesty International
Patch Adams
Perfect Storm, The
Point Break
Prince Of Egypt, The
Pulp Fiction
Red Hot Chili Peppers:Funky Monks
Right Stuff, The
Rounders
Saving Private Ryan
Se7en
Shaft
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Spartacus
Sting, The
Super Speedway
Superman II
Superman: The Movie
There's Something About Mary
Tomorrow Never Dies
Toy Story 2
U-571
Walking With Dinosaurs

Some of these are embarrassing to own (which doesn't mean I don't like them btw)

Some of these I own and don't even like - buying for appearances?

Which movies would I care about losing in a fire?

I like light hearted comedys but don't own many

What would be really enlightening would be to have accurate figures for how many times I have watched each. Some would be 0. Why even bother taking the shrink wrap off until I watch it?

I know in the early days of home theatre and DVD I used to buy movies because of the quality of the transfer/audio mix/extras with the quality of the movie itself being secondary.

So I'm screwing about in the front yard practicing my golf chipping. I have a dozen real balls (not plastic practice whiffle balls) and a net my wife got for xmas. I'm just bumping them at the net 8 or 10 feet away. Carole comes up and asks to have a go.

"Are you sure you want to try with real balls?"

"Yes of course."

A minute later she's had one swing, one divot out of the front lawn, the ball goes sailing over the front fence and goes bouncing up the road towards a neighbour's car. We both just stand there watching it go..bounce bounce bounce...it didn't hit the car. And Carole didn't hit any more golf balls. :)

My wife just got home with a present for me. New board shorts. She bought them because they were cheap...but I just bought 2 pairs recently. I guess you can never have too many pairs :)

Why

Why have I started a blog? To learn more about myself. To write about something requires that you think about it. When what you are writing about is yourself and your life, then the process of thinking about it may lead to a greater understanding of both. At least that's what I hope :)

About me

My name is Tony and I live in Australia. But rather than give you some great spiel about my hobbies and interests, I'll wait until they pop up in my life and you can gradully find out about me. If they don't pop up in my life then they musn't be hobbies or interests...We'll see what evolves as time goes by.

I'll cover one aspect of my personality today and the others I'll also leave for when they are topical. I'm an obsessive person. By that I mean I get interested in something and I obsess on it. It consumes my thoughts. I dream about it. My web browsing is dominated by it. I buy paraphenalia to do with it. I borrow books from the library to find out more about it. Not sure if it's entirely healthy but it's how I am.

I can't face typing it all over again tonight. I need sleep........

Don't you hate it when you spend an hour typing something up and then lose it? Well that's what just happened to me..my very first blog post and when I clicked Post and Publish I get vbscript errors and can't salvage what I had typed :(